Backblaze vs. Carbonite

Backblaze and Carbonite are two of the easiest online backup services you can use at the moment and are two of our more popular services that we have reviewed. In many ways the services are similar but they are very different in how they perform their backups.

Backblaze takes the approach to backup everything on your computer with the exception of your operating system, applications, and temporary files. Unless otherwise excluded Backblaze will back it up. A default Backblaze install will protect the majority or peoples files on their computer.

Carbonite offers a more traditional folder and selection process but it will not backup your computer system files such as .EXE and .DLL files, temporary files ,operating system files, files in hidden system folders, files over 4gb in size and video files. You can however manually select files over 4gb and video files. This can take a little longer to setup and configure but with a little tweaking will protect the majority of peoples files.

Backblaze

Carbonite

Founded

2007

2005

Price MonthYear2 Year3 Year

$5.00 / Month
$50.00 / Year
$95.00 / Two Years
NA

NA$59.99 / Year
$109.99 / Two Years
$149.99 / Three Years

Supported Platforms

Windows & Mac

Windows & Mac

Free Trial

Yes

Yes

Storage Size

Unlimited

Unlimited

File Sharing

No

No

Lock File Support

No

Yes

Local Backup

No

YesHomePlus and HomePremier plans support local backup.

External Hard Drive

Yes

YesHomePlus and HomePremier plans support external hard drives.

Network Drives

No

No

Web Access / Restore

Yes

Yes

Locate Computer Feature

Yes

No

Encryption

Yes

Yes

Internet Transmission with SSL

Yes

Yes

Private Encryption keys

Yes

Yes (Windows Only)

Support

Email

Email, Chat, Phone

Restore

Client, Web, USB Flash Drive, USB HD

Client, Web, USB HD (HomePremier account only)

Mobile Access

No

Yes (iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry)

File Size Limit

Unlimited

4GB (By default, larger files can be manually selected)

Bandwidth Throttling

No

Yes

Backup Scheduling

Yes

Yes

Backup Continuously

Yes

Yes

File Versioning

30 Days of Revisions

12 Versions

File Archiving

30 Days

30 Days

If there is anything else you would like added to the Backblaze versus Carbonite comparison table please leave a comment.

Whether your choose Backblaze or Carbonite to backup your files both services do a good job of keeping your files safe in the event your computer hard drive dies, your computer is stolen or some other disaster happens.

About Cloud Storage Buzz Team

8 Responses to Backblaze vs. Carbonite

I just redid my harddrive and figured I had backblaze installed so it would be easy to restore my files. Not so. After spending the better part of the weekend downloading files both in under 20gb chunks and in one 60+gb chunk, I discovered to my horror that upon restoration, the files are empty! -0- bytes yet the filesnames are intact. I wrote to tech support but have not heard back from them yet. My big issue is that they REALLY need to have a telephone number to contact them when a situation like this occurs. I’m out of business until they figure out what is going on.

Richard,
I am sorry to hear about your problems restoring from Backblaze. This is certainly a good reminder that you should always do a couple of things before you wipe your hard drive. One is have a local backup, it is always much easier to copy all your files back from a local source, the second is to test your restores before you need them. That way you might have been able to spot the problem with your files on Backblaze before you needed them. Certainly it is not good that Backblaze has had problems restoring your files and it would be nice if they had phone support to help in cases like this.

Yes you are correct, except the type of bandwidth throttling that the table refers to is where the service throttles the amount of bandwidth the client can use. In this case Carbonite throttles a client depending on how much data they have backed up, while Backblaze does not have a bandwidth throttle and you can use as much of the bandwidth as you can.

It really is difficult to compare the two since they offer different ideas on how and what to backup. If you want really easy Backblaze. Want total control, CrashPlan. Depends on what kind of computer user you are I guess.